Why has Apple Pay stopped working on my MBP? It always makes me confirm on my phone or watch now. Has anyone else seen this (and fixed it)?

@siracusa The silver lining is that it's a good time to be the developer of an app that helps people survive with less storage! Use your Hyperspace windfall to buy that new Mac.

@siracusa Sorry if I missed it somewhere in the show notes, but do you have a link to the thing that lets you adapt a sink soap pump to pump directly from a larger bottle? I can't figure out the right search term to find this, and I'm intrigued (because my integrated soap dispenser has a pathetically small bottle that I am constantly refilling).

@atpfm Serious question: what is the use case for 120 Hz on a display, outside of gaming? Is it just the smoother scrolling and stuff? And if I can't notice the difference on an iPhone is there any reason to expect that I'd notice the difference on a 27" display?

What's going on with Xcode 26.3? I held off on installing when the RC came out because I assumed the final release would be happening any day, but now 26.4 betas are out and 26.3 still isn't fully released.

Why does this Apple Music setting lump together 5G and wifi? Is there some way I'm missing to have maximum quality on wifi and not on 5G? (I realize that I almost surely can't hear the difference with lossless, but that's not the point. It's just bizarre that they combine this into a single setting.)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@macrumors/115888197133614141

I really hope this doesn't mean they're going down the Adobe path, and will force me into a subscription even though I already bought Final Cut Pro and Logic... Services revenue, right?

In November, I left my tech job. Today’s tech industry is unrecognizable compared to what it was when I started at Amazon in 1999. I’m looking forward to a 2026 filled with more human connection and creativity than algorithms and models.

@siracusa I don't know if you take such things into account, but consider this one vote for a return of the chicken hat next fall/winter. I bought V1 and wear it almost every day on my morning walks this time of year. Skipped V2 because I already had V1, but now I'm thinking I should have gotten at least one backup, cheese grater style...

@siracusa I don't know if your parents have Apple Watches, but my hypothesis with my mom's butt dialing was that her phone was getting unlocked via the watch while it was in her pocket. I suggested she turn that setting off, and it hasn't happened since. (It's only been a few weeks, though.)

@marcoarment talking about Amazon's UX track record on @atpfm this week reminded me of the time when I, as a manager at Amazon, said matter of factly in a meeting that we weren't known for good UX. I thought I was stating a well-known fact, but it was not well-received... Might have been a career-limiting comment.

Weird artifact at the top of this photo, shot at 8X on an iPhone 17 Pro. Those white posts should just continue up vertically. I guess this is “computational photography”?

@hotdogsladies I'm way behind, so sorry if this was already mentioned (no, it isn't about naked swimming). My hypothesis about the speakerphone epidemic is that reality TV stars have to use speakerphone so the viewer can hear both sides, and people out in the world saw it and thought it was the cool thing to do, so they started doing it too.

@atpfm I am going to have to turn in my power user credential after asking this embarrassing question... Can one of you please explain the use case for a clipboard manager that makes it so crucial? Beyond the maybe once a year "oops I accidentally copied before pasting" mistake, I am having a hard time coming up with a reason I'd want or need a history of my clipboard, or to be able to copy more than one thing at a time. A failure of imagination on my part, I'm sure, but can you please help me?

@caseyliss I legitimately don’t know how you can think the Studio Display camera is trash, but the Apple TV remote is fine. 😅 I use the Studio Display camera virtually every day and have zero issues. The Apple TV remote annoys me every time I touch it.

@siracusa @hotdogsladies Re: RD 245, I don’t agree that you can think of a phone as a standalone piece of tech that you can, without consequence, choose to not modify your habits/anxieties around. So much of the infrastructure that supported life pre-cell phones is gone. No pay phones. No maps in cars. (Almost) no phone numbers memorized. Sometimes you need an app to park somewhere. You can’t just say, “if my phone dies I’ll go back to the old way.” The old way does not exist any more.

@atpfm you guys often talk about the show going long. But this has made me wonder… is there a specific target length for an episode you have in mind? Or is it just vibes?

Home-ownership is replacing a toilet fill valve with no disasters and only one trip to the hardware store, and counting it as a major victory.

As an aside, I tried to ask this of the Apple support iMessage thing, and it auto-replied with instructions for ordering a Vision Pro. Neither "vision" nor "pro" appeared anywhere in my question.

It's been a few years since I've done this. Can someone remind me, if I am ordering an AT&T iPhone for my wife via Apple, will it be a problem if I order using my Apple ID? I'm doing the pre-save thing and it isn't asking what AT&T account/phone number the phone should be associated with. Does that happen during the purchase process (or during activation)? There is a "phone number" field on the order page, but I think that's just for billing/order updates.